Why reunion is important in Chinese New Year

"Reunion is the first theme of the Spring Festival and the most important sentiment of the festival." Feng explained that although reunion is also the theme of some other festivals, such as the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Lantern Festival. But because the Spring Festival is also a festival that marks the waxing and waning of life, the psychological need for reunion comes extraordinarily deep.

New Year's Eve is a sleepless night for the Chinese. After the New Year's Eve dinner, the whole family gets together and stays up all night with lights on, known as the "New Year's Eve" or "New Year's Eve". Feng Jicai said, "keep the New Year's Eve" is in fact to guard the time and life belonging to their own, expressing people's life emotion, but also on the nature and a kind of reverence for life. The year begins again, everything is renewed, but the affection is unchanged. Therefore, the reunion must be realized on the New Year's Eve when the old is removed and the new is welcomed.

Expanded:

The Chinese are very good at organizing the Spring Festival. It lasts nearly 40 days, from the first day of the festival to the grand finale, the Lantern Festival. The first year of the year is mainly busy from the outside to the home. First, people rush home from all directions, and then they buy new year's goods, clean their houses, decorate their lives, and plan the New Year's Eve dinner and other things. This is from the outside inward vigor. New Year's Eve is the climax, and the climax is the reunion.

Then, entering the New Year, the direction of the force began to reverse, becoming from inside to outside. The first major event in the first month of the year is the New Year's greeting. Worship first elders after peers, first close relatives after distant friends, gradually expanding to the community of old friends and acquaintances, and finally is the Lantern Festival. In this way, the year is over and people return to their respective places of life and work.

People's Daily Online - Feng Jicai: Reunion, the most important theme of the Spring Festival